Westinghouse, General Electric, Maytag, Whirlpool, Sylvania, Line Material, Motorola, Ericson, Canon, West Point Pepperell, Allis Chalmers, Reynolds, and many others? All taken over by hostile conglomerate entities, third world slave wage labor competition, and just simply expanding into areas they have no expertise and then abandoning their core business model.
It is ashame some of these American icons are falling because of their loss of market competitiveness against the third world slave wage labor countries and their greed for the almighty quick easy dollar.

Westinghouse, General Electric, Maytag, Whirlpool, Sylvania, Line Material, Motorola, Ericson, Canon, West Point Pepperell, Allis Chalmers, Reynolds, and many others? All taken over by hostile conglomerate entities, third world slave wage labor competition, and just simply expanding into areas they have no expertise and then abandoning their core business model.
It is ashame some of these American icons are falling because of their loss of market competitiveness against the third world slave wage labor countries and their greed for the almighty quick easy dollar.

I agree. I wish things could go back to what they used to be. How awesome would it be if Westinghouse was still making cobraheads? Even better still making the OV-15 and OV-25?

Greed got Westinghouse in the late 70's when they decided they could make more money in government military contracts than their core electrical business that made them what they were. GE is following their footsteps.

Unfortunately greed seems to be what all companies are about anymore.

I think it might have to do with how much the government intervenes into what companies (and people in general) are doing, including taxes, regulations, and so on. It is no coincidence that some of the greatest advancements in the US in regards to technologies and the establishment of some of the companies mentioned above were done during the Wild West era

Unfortunately greed seems to be what all companies are about anymore.

That is the essence of global market economy and capitalism. To make as much money as possible.

But you actually can't put all the blame for the companies. the companies are only doing what the owners orders them to do. And if you look who are the owners, in many cases there are big hedge funds, equity firms and such. And the sole reason for those to exist is in turn to make as much money as possible to owners of these instances. If they can't do it, the owners will find someone else that can. Same goes for the management of the company down in the chain.

Capitalism = basic property rights, being applied to money :
1. Whatever money you made is yours and only you get to choose what to do with it
2. No one owes you any free meals

Capitalism never said anything about how much money you are making. It is assumed that money you made is by your work, or by your additional work to make extra value out of somebody else's initial work - for example by being able to sell it better than he would alone

Capitalism = basic property rights, being applied to money :
1. Whatever money you made is yours and only you get to choose what to do with it
2. No one owes you any free meals

Capitalism never said anything about how much money you are making. It is assumed that money you made is by your work, or by your additional work to make extra value out of somebody else's initial work - for example by being able to sell it better than he would alone

That's really narrow way to describe capitalism.

Even wikipedia describe capitalism as following

In general, capitalism as an economic system and mode of production can be summarised by the following:

Capital accumulation: production for profit and accumulation as the implicit purpose of all or most of production, constriction or elimination of production formerly carried out on a common social or private household basis.

Commodity production: production for exchange on a market; to maximize exchange-value instead of use-value.

Private ownership of the means of production

High levels of wage labour.

The investment of money to make a profit.

The use of the price mechanism to allocate resources between competing uses.

Economically efficient use of the factors of production and raw materials due to maximization of value added in the production process.

Freedom of capitalists to act in their self-interest in managing their business and investments.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

It is indeed worth stating about the private ownership of means of production

The rest - efficient use of resources, etc are sensible outcomes, but they are not strict rules : You can be a one man company (with no wage workers) and this is still capitalism. You might not use resources efficiently - this may make you making less profits and may make your business fail, but inefficiency in itself does not contradict capitalism either. And so on

Heard a quote from the GE president that if they weren't number 1 or 2 at something, they didn't want to be in it. Under Jack Welch in the 1980s, GE sold off their small appliance division to Black and Decker in mid 1980s. The electronics division was sold to Thomson of France in late 1980s and GE exited most of this market in late 2000s. Then a few years ago the appliance division including Appliance Park of Louisville KY was sold off to Haier. Now GE wants to sell their Consumer and Industrial Lighting business. The Bridgeport, CT GE small appliance plant/former Remington plant that had been since the 1920s on Boston Avenue was demolished a couple of years ago as well.

GE was more interested in financial, medical, insurance and aerospace rather than consumer/commercial appliances and electronics.

Similar things happened with Westinghouse only they began to dismantle in the 1960s and 70s.

Some government regulation is needed to prevent monopolizing industries such as buying your competitor through hostile takeover and then running it dry and out of business. Another is the essential utilities that can cause havoc on the economy when rates skyrocket and consumers are left to fend for themselves. You notice how gas prices rose when the top 11 gasoline companies merged into 4? The government DOJ anti-trust division should have stopped that.

Many times, this sort of actions by big corporations need the government involvement to become possible in the 1st place. For example, they lobby to make regulations that will prevent the rise of some new competitor to fill the void in the market. They cannot say it fair and square that they lobby to kill competition, so it will be disguised as "its for the publics safety / security / going green / etc" which is in fact socialist stuff

I'll take Capitalism over communism or any other ism any day.  Stop relying on the government to bail you out. 

And never take anything on wikipedia as law.  The fact that anyone can go on there and write their own definitions if they don't like what they see is proof. 

I'll take Capitalism over communism or any other ism any day.  Stop relying on the government to bail you out. 

And never take anything on wikipedia as law.  The fact that anyone can go on there and write their own definitions if they don't like what they see is proof. 

Capitalism and communism are quite different things as first one is purely economic system while the later is more of a political and social system.

It is indeed worth stating about the private ownership of means of production


The rest - efficient use of resources, etc are sensible outcomes, but they are not strict rules : You can be a one man company (with no wage workers) and this is still capitalism. You might not use resources efficiently - this may make you making less profits and may make your business fail, but inefficiency in itself does not contradict capitalism either. And so on

I'd say you are severy over simplifying it.





And I also find it funny how some people first don't want any goverment intervention on anything because "let the market decide" and then when the companies are using their right of economic freedom of capitalism to, lets say move a production to a place where it's cheaper to do, because it helps the company to succeed better in competition and make more profit for the owners and investors for the effort these groups have provided for the company, these same people complain about it's being wrong and that somebody should do something about it.

And I also find it funny how some people first don't want any goverment intervention on anything because "let the market decide" and then when the companies are using their right of economic freedom of capitalism to, lets say move a production to a place where it's cheaper to do, because it helps the company to succeed better in competition and make more profit for the owners and investors for the effort these groups have provided for the company, these same people complain about it's being wrong and that somebody should do something about it.

I noticed this as well. They get mad at government for making bans of stuff (lighting for example) or set regulations on companies (pollution ones) but yet they want that same government telling companies where to make things like make it here and not in China or elsewhere. Trump’s tariffs is close enough to being government “orders” to the companies. Legally he can’t just order them to move out so he decided to make it costly to stay. Whatever happened to letting market decide things.